March 29, 2004

• Cardinal
  

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  When I was small, young, and impressionable in a good way, before school told me I wasn't as smart / social / acceptable as everyone else; a wonderful teacher made the first grade exciting.  Mrs. … Mrs. … McNamara?  The only thing I remember, like my first lover’s face and name so inscribed in my memory as if a steel awl worked on my brain’s granite synapses, is her book of birds with the Cardinal adorning the cover – the Cardinal (eeep).  It was a little book, 4”x4” in dimension but huge to me.  I took it home and sat staring out the frost covered window looking for the Cardinal.  Mom had filled the feeder with Sunflower seeds the day before.  Brown Sparrows lit and thrashed seeds right and left looking for something more.  A Red arrow strikes the tall pole and holds on to the perch as the sparrows scatter; little brown sparks to his steel flint’s strike.  He holds there, tall Fire Engine feathered, impossibly colored in the grey lake-effect day.  Flit, flit of the tail, scoop and up, alert!  Broadly he sits and we meet eye to eye.  His year old young proud wisdom displayed in deep pools of blackness met at the edge by me.Gone, shaking pole, seeds falling, the day is empty – Gone!!!

  
  

  Just hold your boundaries fast, know thyself, and listen to the faint, now growing louder, sound of you … there, here it?(eeep)

  • 6:17 pm
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